As Trump administration reforms the EPA, cleanups of America’s most toxic sites are uncertain

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LOS ANGELES — Just over a mile from where Patricia Flores has lived for almost 20 years, a battery smelter plant spewed toxic elements into the environment for nearly a century.

Exide Technologies in southeast Los Angeles polluted thousands of properties with lead and contributed to groundwater contamination with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a cancer-causing chemical.

Since Exide declared bankruptcy in 2020, California has invested more than $770 million to clean the various properties. But much more cleanup is needed, and with Donald Trump's return to the White House, those efforts are uncertain.

“The groundwater that was found to have TCE is spreading,” said Flores in Spanish. “It’s not just going to affect us – other people will also be impacted by the contamination. And it is worrying that we won’t be added to the priority list for the cleanup to be done.”

Residents, environmental advocates and state and federal lawmakers have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to list Exide as a Superfund site, which would unlock federal resources for long-term, permanent cleanup. Last year, the EPA determined the plant qualifies due to TCE in the groundwater, which advocates worry is tainting drinking water.

But toxic cleanup experts say the Trump administration could make it harder for hazardous sites to get designated, create a backlog, reduce program funding, and loosen contamination standards.

The goal of the Superfund program, begun more than four decades ago, is to clean the nation’s most contaminated sites to protect the environment and people – often in low-income and communities of color. After a site is added to the National Priorities List, crews evaluate the contamination, create a cleanup plan and execute it. Once that happens, the EPA deletes the site from the list, which could then be redeveloped. There are currently 1,341 Superfund sites, according to EPA figures from December.

While the program has historically received bipartisan support, changes in administration impact how it operates, its funding and oversight. In a statement to The Associated Press, EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said the agency "is putting together a leadership team composed of some of the brightest experts and legal minds of their fields, all of whom will uphold EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship in his first term and the EPA will continue this legacy in his second term.”

It’s too soon to know how Trump’s second presidency will impact the program, but some experts point to his previous term for clues.

A backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grew, even as Trump declared the program a priority while seeking to defund it and the EPA. Vaseliou said Trump's EPA “cleaned up more toxic sites than its predecessor by fully or partially deleting 82 sites from the Superfund National Priorities List." The AP previously reported that Trump and a former EPA administrator took undue credit for cleanups when they made similar statements in 2019. It can take decades to clean up a Superfund site, meaning that by the time it's removed from the list a new administration is in power.

If Trump seeks to defund the EPA again, it could have big impacts on site cleanups in states with less money. Some states don’t have the staff or economic wherewithal to address these sites themselves, “and so they need the federal government as a partner to do it,” said Michael Blumenthal, co-chair of McGlinchey Stafford’s environmental law group, who has represented Superfund cases.

“Polluters pay” taxes, which imposed fees on polluting companies for Superfund cleanups, expired in 1995. They were reinstated with the Biden-Harris administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Many hoped the renewed funding would reverse the decades-long trend of slow clean ups, but some now worry they could be repealed, reducing program funding. Trump has already moved to oust career staff at EPA and other agencies, removed scientific advisers and closed an office that helps minority communities disproportionately struggling with pollution.

Granta Nakayama, a lawyer and partner at King & Spalding, said a reduced number of EPA staff will have a “dramatic effect” because “you just don't have the bodies to really run the program at the level they've historically operated at.”

If the federal government doesn't put in the same effort, state cleanup programs will have to decide if they'll step in to pick up the slack, added Nakayama, who served as EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Some states have more political will than others."

In his first term, Trump also rolled back environmental oversight and protections, including for air and the nation's waterways. Trump signaled he could do the same this time when he signed an executive order to repeal 10 regulations for every one that takes effect. Experts say environmental deregulation could weaken the framework that supports Superfund cleanups.

Blumenthal said there could be efforts to revise the hazardous ranking system, making it harder for sites to be listed. He also said states like California, awaiting a decision, won’t get one straight away. “It could be months,” he said, adding that sites like Exide could be listed as low priority.

Some people working on cleanups are already seeing impacts. Connie Westfall, lawyer and founder of the Westfall Law Firm, has been working on the U.S. Oil Recovery Superfund site in Texas. Her team is waiting on the EPA to sign off on site reports so they can move to the next stage.

“I've never seen anything like it,” she said. “The delays are costing us money.”

Aleja Cretcher, legal fellow for the environmental group Communities for a Better Environment, said they have worked closely with the EPA for years, including on Exide. Losing that support would be a “backslide."

“It’s been decades of poisoning with no accountability,” she said, "and everyone deserves clean soil in their yards and clean air, clean water.”

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